TV-am, 5th December 1989

The first 50 minutes of TV-am on the morning of the day Tory MPs had to vote on Sir Anthony Meyer's leadership challenge to Margaret Thatcher.

Meyer had no expectation of winning. He was a "stalking horse", a front man for people within the Tory Party who wished to remain anonymous and who wanted to test the water to see if there was any appetite for replacing Thatcher as leader. Her increasingly autocratic style, and enthusiasm for the hated Community Charge (aka "poll tax"), were starting to make some Tory MPs nervous about their prospects for re-election.

In the event Thatcher won, as was fully expected, but the number of abstentions made clear that there was enough dissatisfaction to undermine her leadership. Just under a year later she resigned.

Please note that the sound will mute during the item about the classic car auction. This is to remove Drive My Car by the Beatles. I'd originally pitch-shifted it, which worked for a long time, but now the content ID is clever enough to identify quite drastically pitch-shifted music, so the only option is to remove it.